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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WinningerR" data-source="post: 9654935" data-attributes="member: 5247">There was nothing remotely unethical about Lorraine Williams’ TSR licensing Buck Rogers. The big difference between Williams’ TSR and its earlier incarnation is that, eventually, Lorraine effectively owned 100% of the company; it was no longer split between multiple owners. Under those circumstances, even if TSR overpaid for the Buck Rogers rights, Lorraine would have been cheating only herself. In fact, she would have been perfectly within her rights to simply pay herself money directly from TSR’s coffers for nothing at all, so long as it was properly accounted for. (This is called “declaring a dividend.”) When you own 100% of a company, you effectively are the “Board of Directors.” People who own 100% of multiple companies make deals between those companies all the time, even deals that favor one of those companies over another.*  A lot of the commentary upthread assumes TSR should have been operated like a public company with lots of stockholders and regulations. That’s an entirely different situation.(*Technically, there are some restrictions on the deals you can make between your own companies, mostly to prevent you from evading taxes or sheltering money from creditors, but none of that applies here.)Releasing a Buck Rogers RPG circa 1990 was not a dumb idea. Nobody thought the property was potentially lucrative because of the old TV show. They thought it was potentially lucrative because of this:[ATTACH=full]404966[/ATTACH]That’s Buck Rogers drawn by comics superstar Frank Miller—in his creative prime and at the very height of his fame. Just a few years earlier, Miller’s DARK KNIGHT RETURNS was a pop culture phenomenon. Red hot Miller announced he was tackling Buck Rogers as his first major project, post-DARK KNIGHT; he even announced he was also planning to write a screenplay that tied into his new comic series. With Miller onboard for comics and Lorraine willing to throw TSR’s weight behind it—not just an RPG, but a range of novels from TSR’s successful book division, as well—it was not at all insane to believe BUCK ROGERS could be a big thing again. Of course, the program eventually fell apart, but that took a while.</blockquote>

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